Sachin should stop playing one-day matches: Ganguly

A day after former Indian skipper Kapil Dev dropped a bombshell saying that Sachin Tendulkar should retire from international cricket, another former captain -- Sourav Ganguly -- also said that the Master Blaster should at least stop playing one-day cricket if he wanted to extend his Test career.

Seconding Kapil's thoughts on Tendulkar's retirement, Ganguly told Headlines Today from Kolkata on Monday that he has not been able to perform in the ongoing tri-nation ODI series in Australia because he was not regular in the format.

"The reason why Sachin Tendulkar hasn't got runs in this series is because he doesn't play one-day cricket regularly. It's not easy for anyone to go in and come out and keep performing. Obviously that has affected his performances for sure," Ganguly said.

"My point here is the question Sachin needs to ask, does he go on and play the 2015 World Cup, which I think is at this stage not possible. And if he is fit enough to play one-day cricket regularly, if he can't answer these questions, he should go from one-day cricket and just play Test cricket," he said.

"I said before, after the World Cup, that Sachin needs to look at his one-day career because he has achieved everything in one-day cricket. And I think he should stop playing one-day cricket to increase his Test career. He is not getting younger. He is 38, 39, he has played 22 years of cricket. That is a long-long time," he added.

Commenting on the selectors' limitation in dropping Tendulkar from the national, Ganguly said, "I don't see any of the selectors stepping in. I don't see a Raja Venkat or a Krishnamachari Srikkant or a Surendra Bhawe or a Narendra Hirvani standing in front of Sachin Tendulkar and saying 'listen Little Champ, you need to go'. That is never going to happen. So we can say all these things on television which is nice to hear and we can say all these things but that doesn't happen."

"I think Sachin deserves his own, on his own to leave international cricket or one-day cricket, whichever time he wants to go. But for me, Sachin has to ask himself," he said.

Earlier, in an interview to Headlines Today executive editor Rahul Kanwal, Kapil had said Tendulkar should have retired from international cricket after winning the 2011 World Cup.